Harry Potter and the Invisible City
by Katty3
Summary: Cannon pairings, gay themes, DH spoilers::All is deceptively calm until Harry Potter’s quiet life isn’t so quiet anymore.  Hermione comes to Harry after a confrontation with Ron with a strange revelation. It's up to them to take on the Wizarding World.
1. Chapter 1

An Epilogue Revisited: 19 2/3 Years Later

Harry Potter took his afternoon tea in the bright tidy kitchen of his home. He leaned back against the counter by the sink rather than sitting at the table while he drank, because Ginny wasn't here to nag him for eating while standing. She and Lily were out doing a little shopping 'just for the girls' to get something special (probably with glitter) before the three of them went to meet the Hogwarts Express in four days. Ginny might not admit it aloud, but Harry knew she was going to miss the quite days with her little girl once Hogwarts let out in a few days and the boys returned.

He'd just brushed a few crumbs from his chocolate biscuit off his mouth and watched them fall to the floor when he heard a pop of some one apparating on his doorstep followed by the crash of his door slamming open. Harry looked up startled as Hermione burst through the front door, her eyes blazing with a fury Harry hadn't seen for years. Harry stayed frozen as she marched right up to him and grabbed his half eaten biscuit from his fingers without so much as a 'hi, Harry, how are things.' She waved the chocolate biscuit threatening in his face.

"Name me one homosexual, Harry," Hermione demanded.

"What?" Harry squeaked, feeling that he was seconds away from being on the wrong end of a biscuit accident.

"Name me one homosexual, Harry," she repeated slowly. Harry had known Hermione long enough to realize when it was in his best interests just to answer her question.

"Um...that Muggle singer," Harry muttered, "that George Michael bloke." Hermione just glared.

"I meant name me one homosexual that you know of in the whole Wizarding World."

"Oh," Harry said in a small voice, "should have just said so in the first place." Harry thought for a long moment, growing nervous as Hermione continued to stare him down. It shouldn't be that hard, he told himself, he knew literally hundreds of witches and wizards, many of them personally, but specific names eluded him.

"Sorry," he said after a while, "no one comes to mind right away."

Tears welled up in Hermione's eyes and she turned away quickly, pacing the kitchen muttering to herself. Harry even heard a few curses in there that were so out a character for her Harry felt himself blushing.

"This is horrible," she cried as she turned back to Harry. "I should have noticed before now. Damn, my heteronormative indoctrination!" She was trembling and Harry grabbed her shoulders to steady and comfort her.

"What are you talking about, 'Mione?" Harry asked. His voice falling into the same soft tones he used when Lily woke up from a nightmare.

Hermione took a deep breath, like she used to take before launching into some long-winded explanation back in school, and proceeded to burst into tears in the middle of Harry's kitchen. Harry sat her down at their kitchen table with a box of tissues and summoned tea and biscuits as he tried to calm her down.

"Ron and I had a fight," she said finally and blew her nose loudly. Harry nodded in sympathy and felt a little bit of worry creep up on him. After all Hermione had just been asking about 'homosexuals', which had segued immediately into a conversation about his best pal and her husband. Once she'd finished crying Hermione dabbed her eyes and fixed her eye makeup with a quick charm.

"No," she said, "that's not where I should start." She took a long sip of her tea while she visibly collected herself.

"Rosie owled me the other day," she continued. "She's been feeling so bad about leaving Hogwarts which is understandable, this being her first year and all. So I've been trying to help her through it, you know, telling her that I'll help her with her studies over the summer letting her know what books she'll need to read."

Harry nodded and tried not to crack a smile. Only Hermione would think that her eleven year-old daughter would be upset about leaving school because that meant whole summer holiday without classes. He offered the plate of chocolate biscuits, but she waved them away and continued her story.

"She finally admitted to me that she didn't want to be away from her dorm mates for the summer particularly her best friend, Violet. She even said that she wanted to marry Violet when she got older so they'd never have to be away from each other. I didn't think much of it, but I decided to show it to Ron anyway." She started tearing up and had to blow her nose again.

"I told him that it might be a phase, but that I'd start researching the parenting gay and lesbian children just to be on the safe side and he...he suddenly..."

She burst into tears again and it took Harry several minutes and a full cup of tea to calm her down. She was still sniffling a little but seemed in much better control of herself after this last crying jag and Harry saw a look of determination and anger replace her sadness very quickly.

"He _burned_ Rosie's letter right in front of me and told me that it hadn't happened. He said that Rosie had never written me that letter and never said those things and that I wasn't to talk about it ever again with anyone. Not even Rosie."

Confusion settled over Harry's face. He really couldn't picture Ron ever doing or saying anything like that at all. Ron loved his children, doted on them even, especially Rosie who took after her mother so much. Hermione blew her nose again and Harry discretely levitated her used tissues to the garbage.

"He was just surprised," Harry said, "I'm sure he really didn't mean..." Hermione cut him off, her voice brisk and angry.

"Oh he meant every word of it, alright. We got into a terribly screaming row and he said that 'those people' were unnatural, not 'true' Wizards, and destroyed 'proper' families. He wouldn't listen to reason and just kept raving every time I tried to say anything, so I told him he sounded like a Death Eater."

Harry sucked in a breath. Those were heavy words to be throwing around and he could almost guess what happened next. Ron would have gone absolutely off the handle. Harry covered Hermione's hand with his own and squeezed it in assurance.

"You can stay here with us until Ron calms down if you like," Harry said. "You can bring Hugo, too. I'm sure he'd love to spend some time with Lily." Hermione shook her head slowly.

"You don't get it, Harry," she sobbed. "It's not just Ron, it's everyone. The whole Wizarding World."

"I'm sure it's not really like that," Harry said, but his words wavered. He couldn't think of one moment in his entire life where someone said something about someone being gay that wasn't meant as a taunt or a joke. He remembered distinctly that George called Malfoy a poof once during Fifth year, but it had only been a joke. Yeah, Malfoy had been prissy enough during school, but no one had ever _really_ thought he didn't like girls. Harry supposed that now he had a kid to prove it too.

"We've got to stop them, Harry," Hermione said, breaking him out of his reverie. It caught Harry off guard and he almost asked who they needed to stop before he remembered what it was they were talking about.

"Listen, Hermione," Harry replied, "I'm sure it's not as bad as you think it must be. There have to be gay witches and wizards our there. It's just not something that you'd just talk about in everyday conversation. I don't tell the fellows down at the office what Ginny and I get up to in our bedroom so why would anyone talk about that sort of thing so casually."

"Harry, it's not..." Hermione shouted and pounded her hands on the table.

"No, Hermione," Harry interrupted her, "I know you've got a lot on your mind. You always had a lot on your mind, but I don't think there's another enemy here to fight, another oppressed group for you to rally for. Your _Treatise on Elvish Rights_ was bloody revolutionary 'Mione. The Magical Creatures Guild even made you an honorary member for it." Harry cradled her hand gently in his.

"You're already brilliant and famous, 'Mione," Harry said gently as he watched her eyes quiver with tears. "You don't need to try so hard any more. You can take some time and just be there for your family."

The silence hung between them for a long moment, filling up the kitchen with a strangely gentle tension. Harry felt Hermione slip away from him, away from everyone, like she did every time she got immersed in something that he and Ron couldn't even begin to understand and thought about nothing else.

"You don't get it at all, do you Harry?" she finally said, breaking the silence. "I can't say anything to change you mind right now." Her voice was sad and wistful and she dabbed her eyes one last time.

"Just do me one favor, Harry," Hermione asked as she readied her wand to disapparate, "Just...ask Ginny tonight?" She pulled him forward in a sudden hug and Harry was reminded that for as strong and capable as Hermione was, sometimes she still needed a little comforting.

"See you tomorrow, Harry," she said and disapparated with a pop.

Ginny and Lily came back (the bags and boxes from their shopping spree trailing behind them in a colorful train of paper and bows) almost before the funny feel in the air that apparition leaves behind had cleared. It made Harry nervous for some reason he couldn't explain to himself that Ginny might suspect he had company while she was out.

Harry gave her a quick peck on the lips. Lily let out an 'eww' in a very eight-year-old way when she saw them. Harry and Ginny laughed and Hermione's visit was put swiftly out of Harry's mind.

It wasn't until that night as Harry lay in bed watching Ginny finish brushing and plaiting her hair that he thought about what Hermione had asked him to do. He studied the freckles on her shoulder, left bare by her nightdress, as he steadied his courage.

"Can I ask you a question," Harry blurted out finally. She laughed a little.

"Of course you can, Harry," she replied as she turned and joined him in bed, pulling the covers over her pale legs.

"I was just wondering if you, uh, well..." Harry stuttered, "if you, that is, uh...knew anyone who was gay." She frowned and Harry watched her eyes go hard and skeptical as she raised her guard like is was twenty years ago and she thought he might be a spy.

"Why would I know any of _those_ people?" she asked, her voice cold. "What have you heard?"

"No, nothing at all," Harry replied. "Someone just mentioned something that made me think, but it was probably nothing." He put a hand on her shoulder and rubbed his thumb across the thin pink satin strap of her nightdress. "Just go to bed and forget I mentioned anything."

She gave him a speculative look, but said nothing more then goodnight to him and extinguished the light was a tiny flick of her wand. Harry listened as her breathing slowed and deepened, but he couldn't find sleep nearly as easily.

He realized two things as he watched the patch of moonlight move slowly across the ceiling as the moon continued to rise. First, that Hermione had been right, which upon reflection didn't surprise him in the least. And second, that for the first time since they were married he was deliberate keeping something from Ginny.

_Author's Note: This is not meant as a character bashing story in any way (except maybe for those characters from the books who deserve it). I do like Harry Potter and the Harry Potter books so on offence is intended. This story is just about the danger of silence and compliance with a system. I'm interested in how characters, who are good people by nature, respond when they refuse to question the dominant value system._

_I'm not suggesting that all the characters from the Harry Potter books are hatemongering homophobes, but I'm also suggesting that the utter cannon silence on the issue opens the possibility for fanfic like this to exist. Silence is dangerous._

_Please let me know what you think and if you feel I should continue. Also I am sorry if a similar story already exists, I'm not very current within the fandom._


	2. Friends and Nightmares at the Office

Harry was useless at work. Sleep had eluded him until early morning as his thoughts chased round his head. The couple hours he finally managed just weren't enough to keep him going. He wasn't 17 anymore, able to run around Hogwarts all night then jump out of bed in time for classes.

He spent the morning fiddling with his quill and doodling on scraps of parchment so he appeared to be working on the upcoming Auror Graduation ceremony if anyone poked a head in his office. He then cleverly delegated the precious few time sensitive tasks to a very keen intern that reminded him with a nostalgic pain of Colin Creevy and dismissed the young man with a wave.

He'd been putting the finishing touches on his sketch—a Norwegian Ridgeback in mid-flight—when someone knocked at his door.

"Come in," Harry called to the door while he hastily shoved his sketch under other, more official looking papers.

Harry felt his jaw drop when none other than Oliver Wood walked into his office with a grin. He jumped up and gave the man a thumping hug then shut the door and invited Wood to sit down, eager to catch up with his old friend.

"So how'd suspension treat you?" Harry asked with a grin.

"Hell," Wood replied simply, "utter hell. I wanted to jump off a bridge every time I listened to one of Puddlemere's games." Harry winced as he remembered Puddlemere United's poor record. He knew that Wood had not mellowed with age and was still every bit as fanatical about winning as he had been over 20 years ago.

"Well at least you know you still got a coaching spot," Harry said, "even despite your, um, colorful behavior."

"I still maintain the referee was asking for it," Wood stated evenly.

"Usually when someone says 'just go ahead and hex me then' they're not actually asking to be hexed," Harry replied. "She had to be in isolation at St. Mungo's for two weeks projectile vomiting frogs and this was after they got everything reattached." Wood cringed.

"I did write her a card," he admitted with a casual shrug. Harry stared for a moment then burst out laughing, knowing that the card had probably managed to insult both the referee's eyesight and mental faculties while still sounding politely apologetic as only Oliver Wood could.

Oliver had apparently spent his suspended season traveling to watch International Quidditch games—attendance at the games of British and Irish teams violated the terms of his suspension—so the two of them had no shortage of things to catch up on. Oliver Wood had become, surprisingly enough, a good friend of the family's over the years. He was invited over for supper at least once a month, usually when Ginny wanted an exclusive for the Daily Prophet, and often slipped them game tickets and locker room passes in return. The kids loved him, especially James, who thought it was "wicked cool" to have the infamous "Demon Coach" sitting at the dinning room table.

It was nearly forty minutes later when the real reason for the visit came up.

"Well," said Wood, his cheeks coloring, "I mentioned to my sister that I was planning on visiting you soon and she made me promise to put in a good word for Sue, my niece that is, Suzanne Wood-McFee. She just put in for Auror training and she's got her heart set on it, so..."

Harry nodded and assured Wood she was already on the short list and things were looking pretty good for her. Wood thumped Harry's back vigorously in gratitude and Harry invited him over to dinner next week to celebrate his homecoming. Oliver Wood excused himself, reminding Harry that his suspension officially ended at midnight and he had some prep work to do before the overnight conditioning marathon was ready for his players. Harry just shook his head.

He spent the later part of the morning organizing his already clean desk. He didn't keep it nearly as cluttered as most of the others in the department. One of the first things Harry did as head of the Auror Office was to add three yearly awards to recognize the contributions that everyone made to the department. At least half of the department had at least one award sitting on their desks and shelves and some were covering nearly every spare surface of their offices.

Harry didn't put out awards; through he'd received enough, a few of them he even felt he actually deserved. He'd never managed to be completely comfortable with the acclaim. At least, he thought, his celebrity had finally waned. It was hard to make a hero out of someone with a desk job and the public didn't have to know about some of the decidedly non-desk related activities his job called upon him to do from time to time.

He did have a picture of his appointment as department head. He picked up the plain wooden frame and watched himself shake hands with Kingsley Shaklebolt as he was awarded the department key. He set it back down with a sigh between the picture of him with Ron and Hermione at their wedding and the photo that he'd snapped of Ginny and the kids in their garden last summer.

Harry frowned as he thought of Ginny's reaction last night and picked up the photo. He couldn't believe that the face of the woman he loved more than anything in the world, the woman who was smiling in the picture as she played with their children, had been twisted with such contempt last night. By the time he'd finished lunch, which he'd topped off with a pepper-up potion, he'd nearly convinced himself that he'd mistaken Ginny's reaction completely. Maybe she'd thought he was accusing her of infidelity with another woman, or that he was preparing to confess to infidelity himself with another man.

Yes, by the time his ears had stopped smoking he'd convinced himself that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. All of this tension he was feeling was clearly brought on by a certain curly-haired busybody, who couldn't keep herself from blowing things out of proportion. So he couldn't force himself to feel guilty when he seriously considered telling Hermione to step-off when she knocked on his office door. He thought better of it though and let her in. She'd probably spell his door permanently open or something like that. He was sure she had an encyclopedic knowledge of spells ranging from common office annoyances to milder forms of torture.

"Hi Harry," she said in a small voice. Her eyes looked a little red and puffy and Harry felt his anger at her fading away.

He nodded in acknowledgement of her presence but said nothing as she sat down in the chair opposite of him and tossed a thick, leather-bound tome carelessly onto the desk in a decidedly un-Hermione-like way. The book yelped and at that point Harry realized that a face had been transfigured into the leather cover. The face was old-looking, fantastically old looking, with the dust and cobwebs settled in the line about the eyes and mouth. Harry wondered if it had been originally transfigured to look that way or if the leather itself had wrinkled as it aged.

"That hurt," the book cried in a thin, wheezy voice, a puff of gray dust punctuating each word.

"Oh, will you shut up!" Hermione snapped back. Harry's eyes went wide. Hermione never talked to books like that. "Just show him the part you showed me." She sounded worried and that made something in Harry's gut twist in pain.

The book sighed and flipped itself open and a section halfway down the page was glowing with a faint blue light. Harry read.

_Wizards and Witches found to be in violation of section 2 of the Wizarding code of sexual decency (regarding sexual acts between two or more witches or two or more wizards) in a court of law will have their wand broken and be sentenced to exile from the Wizarding World. Additionally, up to 25 years in Azkaban can be leveled against the guilty party as befitting the severity of the crime._

_Witches and Wizards with unnatural sexual tendencies who demonstrate remorse for their condition by preemptively turning themselves into the authorities will be allowed to stay in the Wizarding World provided they undergo a permanent Frigus Curse preformed by a Ministry sanctioned MediWitch. Those who fail to consent to the procedure will have their wands broken and be exiled from the Wizarding World._

_Further procedures regarding trial procedures and jury quotas for sexual decency charges can be found in Section 3.7 of the Wizarding Law Codebo..._

Harry slammed the book shut barely hearing its whine of protest. He swallowed a lump in his throat. He looked at Hermione across the desk meeting her sympathetic eyes.

"Please tell me that these law aren't enforced," he asked, "like the ban on flying carpets or the use of blue mandrakes?"

Hermione simply pulled out a roll of parchment, far less dusty than the book and held it out to Harry. His fingers shook as he unrolled it and found a list of names. He swallowed back a lump in his throat.

"What am I looking at, Hermione?" he asked in a tiny voice.

"Everyone who has been tried and convicted under that bloody law between 1900 and 1999," Hermione told him, her voice shaking with fury.

Harry's head spun. There were hundreds of names listed, each followed by a couple sentences of dense legalese. He recognized a lot of the surnames, Longbottom, Malfoy, Black. He even saw a Potter listed just a couple years before he was born and felt his stomach drop before he forced the thought out of his head. He skimmed back even further and felt a sick lurch.

"Madam Hooch?" Harry asked, quiet despite the anger he was feeling.

"I looked up her case file when I saw that. She had the Frigus Curse placed on her permanently in '67 by the Ministry. Dumbledore hired her straight away after that and was nearly dismissed as Headmaster for doing it, before they realized that they didn't have any laws in place that he was breaking, though they did try with a loophole in..."

"What is the Frigus Curse?" Harry asked, cutting her off. Harry recognized her habit of rambling nervously and knew the only way to stop her from giving you every scrap of information rattling around in her head was to ask a direct question.

"It's like magical castration," she replied. "It removes the libido entirely and leaves its victim, well, frigid." Harry winced at the thought.

"But there are hundreds of names here," Harry exclaimed, his voice rising sharply. "How could we not have heard of this at all?"

"All court cases on sexual deviancy are kept strictly secret," she replied. "The outcomes are all matter of public record, but it's all but impossible to find something in the court archives. More importantly, no one wants to know so no one talks about it and it's like it never even happened."

"Why," Harry asked.

"I don't know" was all Hermione said.

They sat in silence for a long time, both trying to take it in and finding they were only growing sick to their stomachs. The roll of parchment sat on the desk between them, each name listed a tiny tragedy they were too late to stop. Harry felt the moment he stopped feeling, when his emotions just shut down rather then acknowledge any more.

"I think you'd better leave for now, Hermione," Harry said. She started to say something, but Harry kept talking. "I've just have to think about all this, okay?"

"Okay," she replied as she picked up the book, which swore at her. She smothered it with her sleeve in retaliation as she left Harry's office.

He studied the list of names for the rest of the afternoon, feeling increasingly numb to it all with each passing minute. By the time he left his office he was wondering if he should grab a potion before he left of slip out to a pub for something a bit stronger. He wasn't looking where he was going when he was flagged down by Ron.

"Oi, Harry," he called out, "wanna grab a quick drink?"

"I can't," he replied and then quickly continued. "I've got a lot to do at home before the boys come back."

"That's tough, mate," Ron said. His face scrunching up in sympathy, knowing firsthand what kind of taskmaster his sister could be when she set her mind to it.

"Right then," Ron continued, "see you tomorrow." He started to leave, then froze and turned like he's just remembered something he'd forgotten. Harry held his breath.

"You wouldn't have happened to talk with 'Mione today," Ron asked. His drawn and suspicious expression was almost copy of Ginny's last night. Harry remembered Hermione's account of Ron's reaction to his daughter's letter.

"She came to see me a bit earlier so I could clarify the department's position on the employment of magical beings and sentient magical creatures," he lied smoothly. "Was something wrong?" Ron's shoulders visibly relaxed.

"Nah," he replied, "It wasn't anything. See ya, Harry!"

"Bye, Ron," Harry called back as Ron disappeared around the corner.

Harry sighed and debated how much firewhisky he could drink without Ginny noticing. He'd just lied to both his wife and his best friend in less then twenty-four hours. He was going to need some liquid fortification if he was going to get through supper without looking guilty. Because guilt was all he could let himself feel right now.


End file.
